Meet the Team.
Principal, Lead Consultant
Co-founder of Magnolia Birth House in Miami and the executive director at Atlanta Birth Center
Tamara Taitt
Tamara is the co-founder of Magnolia Birth House in Miami and the executive director at Atlanta Birth Center. During her career, she has focused on reducing perinatal health disparities and improving Black infant health. Tamara has nourished her long-standing professional interest in the sustainability of the midwifery profession by serving on a variety of national boards. She was the Southeast regional representative on the board of the Midwives Alliance of North America for seven years and is a past board member for the Foundation for Advancement of Midwifery. She currently serves as the Board President of the Florida School of Traditional Midwifery. Tamara has also spent the last six years working as the Director of Student Life, Equity & Access at the Midwives College of Utah. She shares a home with her partner Michelle, her step-daughter, nine dogs, two cats, approximately 200 houseplants, and a 400-volume cookbook collection. When not reading, streaming her favorite British dramas and making savory meals, Tamara spends her time planning road trips in their Blue Bird school bus RV conversion and looking at building specs for a future Wisconsin homest
Principal, Lead Consultant
Practicing midwife and the owner and director of Roots Community Birth Center in Minneapolis
Rebecca Polston
Rebecca is a practicing midwife and the owner and director of Roots Community Birth Center in Minneapolis, a CABC accredited birth center. She has a passion for building community and creating a safe space for all birthing families. Rebecca was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Interdisciplinary Research Fellow. She has worked in non profit development, community organizing, public policy and is a current Bush Fellow. She is on the board of the MN Chapter of NACPM and the MN Chapter of AABC. She has been in practice as a midwife since 2011 and involved in professional birth work since 1998. Rebecca believes in providing nurturing, grounding, transformative care. She and her husband have three children, two of whom were born at home. She spends her time riding her horses, loving her old dog, watching horror movies and reading.
Project Manager
Emily Chen
Emily Chen brings over 15 years of operating and financial experience and global perspectives to her work in maternal health. She is an investor and healthcare operator, having built sustainable businesses across women's health, value-based analytics, and behavioral health. Previously, she served as Chief Growth Officer at Quilted Health, a venture-backed maternity care provider and managed services organization. Emily is also an investor at Lok Capital, an impact growth equity fund scaling financial services, agriculture, and climate companies in India. She began her career as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong. Emily received her MBA at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and her BA, magna cum laude, from Dartmouth College. She lives with her family in New York City, where she was born and raised.
Attorney, maternal health educator, birth and postpartum professional
Ravae Sinclair
Ravae Sinclair, JD has more than twenty-four years of experience supporting families and advancing the perinatal workforce. Over the course of her career, she has personally supported more than 1,000 families through pregnancy, birth, postpartum recovery, infant feeding, and early parenting.
A graduate of Marquette University Law School, Ravae practiced as an Assistant State Public Defender, representing more than 3,000 clients in hearings, trials, and appeals. Her legal background continues to inform her work in professional standards, ethics, risk management, policy development, and organizational leadership within maternal and child health.
For the past decade, Ravae has focused on building sustainable systems of support for families and birth professionals. She is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Birth Connections, a multi-state perinatal services organization, and the Founder and CEO of National Birth & Postpartum Professionals (NBPP), a national professional association dedicated to education, certification, mentorship, and continuing professional development for birth and postpartum professionals.
Ravae has served in numerous leadership roles throughout the maternal health field, including President of DONA International, one of the world's largest doula organizations, Ethics Committee Chair, Intercultural Director, Treasurer and Deputy Director of the National Association to Advance Black Birth (NAABB), and Board Member of the Iowa Black Doula Collective. Through these roles, she has contributed to professional standards development, ethics review, workforce advancement, and maternal health advocacy at both the national and community levels.
Operations and Management Consultant; Founder and President, Analytics Nest, LLC
Lori Manning
Lori is a healthcare operations and management consultant whose work includes supporting midwives, doulas, birth professionals, and maternal health organizations. She brings more than 15 years of experience in project management, process improvement, compliance, business analytics, and organizational operations across complex and highly regulated environments. Lori brings a systems-oriented approach to consulting, examining how people, processes, technology, data, payer requirements, and organizational policies work together.
Prior to expanding her consulting work into maternal health, Lori built an extensive career managing complex operational, compliance, analytics, and technology initiatives across government, consulting, financial services, and legal environments. Her experience includes process redesign, regulatory compliance, quality assurance, data analysis and reporting, system implementation, stakeholder management, training, and organizational change.
Lori is President and Founder of Analytics Nest LLC, where she helps organizations translate complex operational challenges into practical, sustainable solutions. She earned a Bachelor of Science from New York University’s Stern School of Business, double-majoring in Information Systems and Marketing, and is an ASQ Certified Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence and Six Sigma Green Belt.
Human resources strategist and consultant
Bridget Whitaker
Bridget Whitaker, JD is a seasoned human resources strategist, executive leader, and consultant with more than 20 years of experience helping organizations build strong teams, navigate complex workplace issues, and create people-centered systems that support both employees and organizational performance.
Throughout her career, Bridget has held senior human resources leadership roles with responsibility for talent strategy, employee and labor relations, workforce planning, compensation and benefits, policy development, performance management, workplace safety, leadership development, organizational culture, and employment compliance. Her experience includes serving as Vice President of Human Resources for Lakeshore Technical College, Director of Human Resources for St. Charles Youth & Family Services, a Human Resources Business Partner supporting multiple employers, and founder and Chief Human Resources Consultant of QB Solutions, LLC.
Bridget currently serves as Executive Director of Safe & Sound, Inc., where she continues to oversee the organization’s human resources strategy while leading broader organizational operations and strategic direction. Her ability to work at the intersection of people, policy, leadership, and organizational sustainability gives her a unique understanding of the challenges facing growing and evolving organizations.
She holds a Juris Doctorate with a concentration in Employment Law, a Master of Management, a Bachelor of Arts from Marquette University, and a Professional in Human Resources (PHR) certification. Bridget is particularly skilled at helping leaders navigate sensitive employee matters, strengthen supervisory practices, develop effective workplace policies, manage organizational change, and build cultures rooted in accountability, dignity, equity, and respect.
As an HR consultant, Bridget brings both technical expertise and practical executive experience to the table, helping organizations create workplaces where their people can thrive while ensuring leadership has the structures, tools, and guidance necessary to effectively manage the business of employing people.
Business strategist and management consultant
Dasheeda Dawson
Dasheeda Dawson, MBA is an award-winning business strategist, executive leader, and management consultant with more than 20 years of experience transforming strategy into measurable results across corporate, nonprofit, entrepreneurial, and government environments.
A Princeton-trained molecular biologist with a MBA from Rutgers Business School, Dasheeda spent more than 15 years leading brand strategy, marketing, digital transformation, operations, and business development for major organizations including Target, Victoria’s Secret, and United Way. Her career has since expanded across executive consulting, entrepreneurship, nonprofit leadership, and government administration, giving her a unique ability to understand organizations from multiple sides of the table.
As a senior executive and consultant, Dasheeda has advised major corporations, startups, nonprofits, trade associations, and government agencies. Her expertise spans strategic planning and organizational development, financial and P&L management, RFP development and procurement, marketing and digital strategy, program design, stakeholder engagement, and operational execution. She has built and led cross-functional teams, launched businesses and nonprofit organizations, developed multi-million dollar public-private partnerships, and taken complex initiatives from concept through implementation. Her government leadership experience also includes building new programs, managing public resources, and coordinating initiatives across agencies and external stakeholders.
Known for combining executive-level strategy with hands-on execution, Dasheeda helps organizations clarify where they are going, build the systems required to get there, and turn ambitious ideas into sustainable results.